“In a real-world situation, at my job, at your job as a columnist, if you were do what that person did in your job place, I think minimally what would happen – minimally – you would be fired from your newspaper, your beat writing job. And this is Mr. Rypien’s career, this is his job, he’s being paid to represent the NHL, and they feel to take a two-week break off without pay and come back to work is satisfactory. But as far as the real world goes, that person would be held accountable as far as the law and just as a company in general, that person would probably be fired.”

That’s right, Engquist would like Rick Rypien to be fired. Are we sure there’s no one in public relations in Minneapolis or St. Paul that would like to do some pro bono work, because if anyone needs it right now it’s James Engquist. At least Engquist is getting some of his concerns addressed now.

When he complained that he hadn’t heard anything from the Wild or the NHL or the Canucks about what happened the other night, he’s heard from someone now. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman reached out to him personally to try and calm the waters that divide them.

“He said, ‘Sorry about the events, and players should never ever put their hands on a fan.’ He said he’d like to offer me tickets to a game and dinner, and I thought that was very nice of him. I mean, what do you say at that point. You’re talking to the Commissioner of the NHL. I thought it was really respectful for him to give me a call. He’s a very classy man.”

Game and dinner with the commissioner, all jokes aside here, is a pretty sweet deal. Not everyone gets to meet with the head of the league and take in a game with the guy. As for the jokes, you have to wonder who’s getting punished more severely here, Rypien or Engquist. Come on, we can’t resist a cheap dig.

“I’m getting phone calls from Canadian radio stations, even at work,” he said. “Basically even going out in public. I’ve gotten a lot of hate emails. I’m definitely saving all of them for records purposes.”

He has to understand that the amount of attention he’s getting from this is partially his own doing. He didn’t need to talk to anyone about what happened and he certainly didn’t need to make his possible intentions of taking people to court public either. Wagging his finger at his harassers now will only continue to make life difficult for him. We’re not pro-harassment here because, let’s face it, he was brought into the public eye forcibly, but we might suggest a public relations class for Mr. Engquist once it’s all said and done.

Minnesota Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk has been the most difficult goalies to score against this season. Leave it to a high-level player like Leon Draisaitl to make it look this, well, “easy.”

Draisaitl scored his 13th goal of 2016-17 by capping this pretty give-and-go play with Benoit Pouliot. You can see the frustration from Dubnyk at the end of the tally, as if he was saying “How was I supposed to stop that?” (though probably with more colorful language).

Draisaitl came into Friday with five goals and three assists in his last five games, so he’s been almost unstoppable lately.